This week has been an expensive week at the vet. First we took The Pirate* to see a veterinary opthalmologist on account of his bulging and piratical eye.

Now you might think that pirates are obliged to have one bulging and piratical eye, or at least an eye patch, but you’d be mistaken - as can be easily seen by referencing Captain Jack Sparrow, who has the most beautiful set of identically healthy peepers I’ve seen for a long time. Anyway, I digress. The Pirate has had the eye problem for a while now, and he’s seen an opthalmologist before, and our own vets many times and no-one seemed to know quite why it bulges and goes red. The first opthalmologist, a local vet specialising in opthalmology, thought it was uveitis caused by bad teeth and recommended a dental. Now we’d not had The Pirate long and he’d already had a dental cleaning and extraction, but we did as he said and had that tooth out from under the eye socket. And did the eye clear up as Mr Veterinary Opthalmologist say it would? No, it did not.

So we tried a few more things and then we asked for a referral to a proper and very well known specialist centre, the Animal Health Trust near Newmarket, and that’s where we went on Monday. I have to tell you that the people at the AHT are just so incredibly nice, and being specialists at the top of their field, they tend to put their finger right on the problem very quickly. We saw a smashing lady vet who was very sweet to my twitchy old dog and gave us the diagnosis of immune-mediated episcleritis, which is a condition affecting the white part of the eye and results in redness and swelling. Luckily for The Pirate, episcleritis in dogs is not painful, and it’s not particularly dangerous. We are very relieved that he does not have glaucoma or a lens subluxation or any of the other horrible things that can happen to eyes. Now that has to have drops six times a day plus ointment at night, we are even more relieved that The Pirate (despite being the biggest coward on earth and likely to perform the Greyhound Scream of Death at the slightest provocation) is a dream when it comes to eye drops. He sees the bottle in one hand and a cube of cheese in the other, runs to his bed and stays as still as a statue while the deed is done - then, naturally, looks for the cheese. Did you know pirates are very fond of cheese? No, neither did I. But it’s better than a dog addicted to rum, on the whole.

The Princess came with us to the Pirate’s appointment, and paid us back for the wear and tear of travel and having to stand so long on a hard floor by developing a UTI which resulted in her peeing in the most expensive and heavily padded dog bed in the house - which is saying something since we have about eight of them. She emptied her bladder onto the Orvis Dog Sofa, and let me tell you that greyhound bladders can hold quite a lot.

So, the tally this week is one visit to the AHT costing around £200, one visit to the local vet requiring lab tests and antibiotics, costing around £80, plus a double load of washing and a couple of pots of Prince’s meat paste to hide the pills in.

Oh, yes, and we’re advised that Doggles might help to prevent future flare-ups of episcleritis. Other Half wants me to enquire whether they can make pirate eye-patch style Doggles, since only one eye is affected, but somehow I don’t think they do. Any more than my vet is willing to implant gold teeth.

*Yep, that’s the Pirate, and his famous eye, up there at the top.